Campaign news

The Cuts - the impact on disabled people, by DPAC

7th December 2010

We are all affected by public spending cuts, whether as workers or in the services being cut from our communities. It is this government’s intention to make ordinary people pay the price for an economic crisis which they did not cause.

The savage attacks on the public sector - both in terms of jobs and services - and the cuts in welfare will mean that there will be a disproportionate impact on women, disabled, LGBT and black and minority ethnic people. The cuts will be felt by the most disadvantaged who bear no responsibility for the banking crisis but will now suffer its harshest consequences.

In a series of articles the LRC has asked key campaigning organisations to explain how the cuts will impact upon particular communities, entrenching disadvantage.

The first article in this series comes from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). Download the paper here. It shows:

• 75% of disabled women and 70% of disabled men are already at the bottom end of Britain’s income distribution scale living in poverty
• A tenth of disabled women have incomes below £31 per week and a tenth of disabled men have incomes below £59 per week including earned income and benefits
• Already 30% of disabled people live below the poverty line and 1 in 4 families with disabled children cannot afford heating
• The median level of total wealth for households headed by an employee is £217,500 compared to only £21,100 for households headed by someone who is sick or disabled
• Under the coalition government’s economy drive disabled people are set to lose at least £140 per month through direct cuts to disability benefits (initially devised to pay the extra costs of being disabled) alone